Ever built an arena?

[Piecemaker]

All right, this forum has made me realise how much I miss playing Car Wars.

So I think I am going to build an Arena, and make up some new cars, and run a game.

Anyone ever built an arena? If so, out of what?

Here are my thoughts so far:

1) If using bunkers, trace them on the floor, so they can be moved.


OK- well, that's it so far.

[Toadmaster]

Years ago (probably 1982-83) we made a high speed arena (lots of open area) on a sheet of 4x8 plywood, we got a pad of graph paper with the small and large graph pattern as used by Carwars. We taped all the sheets together and taped it down to the wood. Then we drew the variuos bits of detail onto the graph paper. Not real pretty but it worked. We also made up a city using a similar technique.

[elflord]

I have been using the cardboard castle set for walls and towers.

[schoon]

I've also built an arena, but found 4x8 to be just way too large (I just don't have that kind of space, but it you do, more power to you).

I stuck to 4x4, using 1/4" ply for the base and walls (thus a 4x8 sheet will last the entire project), and much thinner ply for any curved surfaces (jumps, ramps, and the like). Granted, this was for Matchbox scale.

If I were going to do it for the original scale, I think I'd work with foam core.

[tomc]

I've seen white foamcore that's already marked off in a 1 (or 1/2?) inch square grid. The lines are very faint, but it would make cutting and marking a lot easier. If anyone's interested, I could check next time I'm at the store and see who makes it.

[Parody]

I've been designing new arenas (and rebuilding the classic ones) in a desktop publishing app. Then I scale it up to the right size, Distill it to a PDF, and take it to Kinko's to be printed on the oversize laser printers. Works quite well for 1x-3x CWC. Not 3D, but it's cheap and doesn't take up much space.

[Toadmaster]

Originally Posted by schoon

I've also built an arena, but found 4x8 to be just way too large (I just don't have that kind of space, but it you do, more power to you).

I stuck to 4x4, using 1/4" ply for the base and walls (thus a 4x8 sheet will last the entire project), and much thinner ply for any curved surfaces (jumps, ramps, and the like). Granted, this was for Matchbox scale.

If I were going to do it for the original scale, I think I'd work with foam core.

Well we set it up in the crawl space under the house, that gave us a huge room about 4 feet tall (although it was slightly damp and musty at times), we ran some clamp on work lights off of an extension cord and set of a bug bomb before the first game to chase out any squatters (Black Widows). Not the most comfortable gaming space but it kept the parents and younger siblings out of our hair.

It's no wonder gaming was more fun as a kid, it was more work. Now I play at a dining room table, can pretty much buy games when they come out or on a whim, I remember paying $0.25 to open a game and reading it in the corner of a shop to see if I wanted it, now if it looks interesting I just buy it an read it at home. Plus I can stay up as late as I want (or until my body says go to bed you idiot which seems to be earlier than it used to be).

[Execudork]

The Aeroduel rules talk about setting up air battles using just a tabletop and a ruler - they are at 1/4 scale, and speeds are enormous (closing velocities higher than 800 mph were common) so the easiest thing to do was to track only relative positions and velocities, rather than absolute (eg, two vehicles are travelling parallel to each other at the same speed - move nothing each turn unless somebody maneuvers). "Einsteinian" rather than "Euclidian" gaming.

There's no reason not to do something similar with larger scale, lower speed car combats. Pick a largish table, and plop some buildings/obstacles/ramps etc down, and give everybody a ruler and a turning key. The whole game is in inches anyway, so it should be easy enough.

Unfortunately, I've never actually tried doing this, so no empirical test has yet occured. A friend of mine makes tons of little buildings for WarHammer using just heavy cardstock - he can crank out bunkers, houses, roads, walls etc at a fast rate when he's motivated. They look good, too.

Hmm.... ideas in my head.... gotta try this...

[Old Man]

Originally Posted by Toadmaster

Well we set it up in the crawl space under the house, that gave us a huge room about 4 feet tall (although it was slightly damp and musty at times), we ran some clamp on work lights off of an extension cord and set of a bug bomb before the first game to chase out any squatters (Black Widows).

Since when do mere chemicals affect black widows? Last time I checked, the only reliable methods of killing those things were fire and crushing. (Black widows 'scream' if burned. And their egg sacks pop like miniature bags of popcorn.)

[Piecemaker]

Lovely. We go from discussion of arenas to cruelty.

*drags topic back, uh, on topic*

OK- So I have obtained some foamcore. I am going to make some basic square and rectangular bunkers.

In case I didn't clarufy this, I am doing it in Hot Wheels scale. My dining room table is 8x6, so I am going for a 7x5 rectangular/oval.

I intend on making turning keys out of foamcore, as well as using it for th bases on the figures.